Startup time-to-revenue statistics, from 462 documented journeys
Every core benchmark on one page, each stat quotable on its own and traceable to the founders' own writing. Medians over averages throughout: outliers are interesting, but they make bad plans.
Based on 462 documented journeys · data regenerated 2026-08-31
Time to every milestone
| Milestone | Median | Typical range (p25-p75) | Fastest | n |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First customer | 30 days | 14 days - 3 months | 1 days | 364 |
| $1K MRR | 6 months | 3 months - 12 months | 1 days | 294 |
| $10K MRR | 12 months | 6 months - 2.0 years | 2 days | 295 |
| $100K ARR | 2.0 years | 12 months - 4.0 years | 7 days | 226 |
Key statistics
- The median documented journey takes 30 days to the first customer, 6 months to $1K MRR, 12 months to $10K MRR and 2.0 years to $100K ARR.
- 60% of journeys with funding data never took outside money (n = 392).
- The median first transaction was $20 (n = 143).
- Median reported startup cost: $500 (n = 353); 90 founders started with $0.
- Median reported workload: 50 hours per week (n = 323).
- Founders come from 97 countries; the dataset splits roughly evenly between solo founders and co-founder teams.
- AI / ML is the fastest industry to $10K MRR at a median of 5 months (n = 40).
- 1,040 failed experiments are documented across the 462 journeys.
Most used channels
How this data is collected
Every journey is reconstructed from the founder's own published writing: blog posts, interviews, podcast transcripts and threads. 3,574 primary sources back the dataset, and 8,868 claims carry a verbatim quote that is mechanically checked against the cited source.
Limitations, honestly: this is a database of documented successes, so survivorship bias is structural. Timelines rely on founder self-reporting. Segment cells under n = 8 are omitted rather than shown.
Run this against your own numbers
Filter the full dataset by industry, channel and founder type in the benchmark explorer.